Thank You Cookies

Yesterday H did something really nice for me, so I decided to make his favorite dessert – chocolate chip cookies. Now I can’t take credit for this recipe, as H has been making these babes for a while. The recipe can also be found on the back of your favorite Toll House chip package. However these cookies are tried-and-true, and always come out delicious, so I wanted to share them. Here’s some of what you need for success, minus the bottle of wine that we enjoyed last night

(I love the flour on the wooden surface. Feels so professional, in a Julia Child kind of way.)

The plan is pretty straightforward – whisk together your dry ingredients and combine with your wet ones. The latter includes 2 sticks of butter. I don’t feel great about this inclusion, but if you’re gonna make them, do it right. No need for a KitchenAid or fancy kitchen accessories. A hand-mixer and rubber spatula work just fine. I also omit the nuts, but the choice is yours.

Everyone has a cookie preference and I like mine chewy. I normally love crunchy foods, but just not in the form of a cookie. I therefore bake mine for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Make sure you have an oven thermometer. They’re as cheap as $5 and can really prevent burning or under-baking mishaps. We all know ovens are incredibly temperamental creatures. Here are the cookies as they cool on a rack

Now I’ll be honest – I normally don’t cool my cookies on a rack. I let them sit on their baking sheets for about 10 minutes and pry them off. They still tasted great, so I didn’t worry about my method. However last night I wanted to make the cookies look pretty for LAIC so I abandoned the sheets. That’s when I learned why people cool baked items on a wire rack – to prevent burning the bottoms. It was like a eureka moment. I always knew that food continued cooking once out of the oven, but still in its warm vessel, yet never computed that hot cookie sheets = burnt bottoms. Well, now I do and let me tell you – this lesson will not be forgotten. Enjoy!